Fire from Heaven

On 26 July 1593 this island witnessed a phenomenon of atmospheric incandescence which became known in the Madeiran chronicles as the Fogo do Céu (‘Fire from Heaven’).

On the 24th and 25th of that month the well-known ‘east wind’ – the leste (hot, dry easterly wind from Africa) – had blown violently, bringing such intense heat that, in the words of a contemporary witness, ‘there was no living person who . . . would leave the house or open a window, nor could it be endured inside the houses, nor could one stay in them, for the air was so hot that all believed they would perish, and the wind was such that it seemed to burn the very bones, a thing that men had never seen in these parts’.

The heat grew ever more intense, and by nightfall on the 26th the rare but known phenomenon of atmospheric incandescence was clearly visible. At around 11 o’clock it turned into a terrifying fire, which burned all the vegetation and reduced a considerable number of dwellings to a vast mass of embers.

The fire broke out in the houses of Tristão Gomes de Castro; it cannot be determined precisely whether it was caused by the incandescence of the air or by a lightning strike. Within four hours one hundred and fifty dwelling houses burned down, among them those of some of the richest and most important residents of the city. The damage was considerable, above all to crops: the grape harvest was destroyed, the sugar cane fields were also damaged and all the green vegetables were devastated, which together raised the losses to many hundreds of thousands of cruzados. Most of the burned houses were of wood, but many held great wealth, and several warehouses also burned, in which thousands of arrobas of sugar awaiting shipment were stored.

This was undoubtedly one of the greatest calamities ever to strike Madeira. It occurred only twenty-seven years after the terrible sack and massacre by the French Huguenots, whose consequences were even sadder and more lamentable than those of the dreadful Fire from Heaven.